Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

But still: the few minutes of footage were hollywood.

From Emily's perspective, Tartelette was seen leaping into that cave chamber, zapping the brown bear, then the tiger, which was already leaping. The shot deflected the tiger from its trajectory and while still in the air, Tartelette decapitated it. The rest of the shots were almost unusable because Emily was fighting and everything was moving. But Tartelette had then just that one still image printed on old-fashioned photo paper. And the slow-motion sequence was clicked on millions of times. The title of the clip was "Watch famous Reproslayer Arlette killing a tiger. Naked!" Its popularity surely had something to do with the fact that Tartelette's upper body was naked. Not all viewers seemed to be reminded of their mother at the sight of it....

I was now quite envious of the commander's steeled body and vowed that within this year I would also acquire such beautifully proportioned muscles that stood out under the skin. Should I survive that long...

Unfortunately, there were no heroic shots of me. But Tartelette comforted me, in time there would also be many nice shots of me, which I could then compile into an album.

Then an orderly entered and announced:

"A robo-messenger is at the door with a huge basket of Auvergne specialties, apparently someone ordered him here."

The nurse looked at us in irritation. The robo-messenger in question, holding the basket, was standing just behind him.

"Everything for me. Can't have me being in Clermont-Ferrand and not tasting any of the local specialties."

In reality, Tartelette had not only thought of herself, but had ordered enough for all of us and the soldiers from the jetcopter. And so we ate our way through Aligot, Truffade, Bleu d'Augerne and Cantal cheese, until in the evening we were flown by a decacopter to La Rochelle, where the specialists nursed us back to health.

After two additional days in a regeneration tank, we were back on duty thanks to this advanced medicine. Tartelette took great pleasure in designing her special forces program, working her way through catalogs of war material and shopping as she pleased. For she had been granted a huge budget to properly build our elite unit.

Tartelette had made a huge to-do list of tasks for us to learn during the two days in a special clinic where her face had been reconstructed.

After the Auvergne mission, diving and fighting in very confined spaces had moved to the top of the list.

As a result, we spent the last few days sneaking around an abandoned and collapsed factory, chasing dummy repro. Although I thought it would make more sense in the future to just blow up the whole building. Of course, all of this training took place in between our regular missions. Emily and Gabin repeatedly complained about the heavy workload. After all, the usual work hours of eight to eighteen had been increased from eight-thirty to eight in the evening. In addition, there were tasks to do at home. But the commander did not let up. Two days ago she summoned Emily and Gabin to her office. What happened there I don't know, but after that both of them never complained about too much work again.

But unfortunately, in a corner of India, yet another repro-training facility had been blown up. And it seemed that there was more than just the one madman from Auvergne, maybe the terrorists were even organized worldwide!

Intelligence agencies worldwide were in the dark. They had no idea who it was or what the target was. It was also rumored that the Indian incident had nothing to do with the French one and that it was all just made up to collect funds for the Indian ReS.

No matter how you spun it, it seemed necessary that we now also had to familiarize ourselves with classic terrorist measures, such as booby traps or trained soldiers attacking us.

Today was diving training day and we practiced near Île de Ré by a sunken boat.

I suddenly saw one of those remote-controlled diving robots that Thibault unleashed on us as a fish-repro replacement.

I cocked my Harzapp, a combination harpoon and zapper that shot electrified arrows. The tip was connected to the harpoon so we could pull the fish in and then head it -- the best we had currently developed against repro fish. Unfortunately, epidemics of reprogrammed sea creatures had broken out all over the world. So sooner or later, we were going to have to deal with zombie fish.

"Okay people, exercise canceled! We have a mission waiting for you," Thibault spoke over the radio.

It was a repro gull in the village of Ars-en-Ré. A gendarmerie speedboat took us there while Thibault explained everything. "One person was killed and the seagull is flying around freely. Oh, and by the way, the emergency center is temporarily taking over operations. I have to go to the hospital for an appointment."

A few minutes later, we were whizzing around the Île de Ré near where we had done our diving exercises.

The repo gull had perched on the tower of the church of Ars- en-Ré and was eating some pigeons.

Tartelette ordered us to handle it on our own and sat down on a bench. We gained access to the church tower so that we could make at least part of the climb up the stairs. As did the tourists who climbed the steeple for the beautiful view. Since religion had been banned after the Second Trireligious War, churches were no longer used sacredly.

After that, willy-nilly, we had to climb along the church steeple roof to catch the seagull that had made itself comfortable in a niche. Fortunately, it had eaten the two pigeons whole and not just bitten them, otherwise we would have had to take care of those too.

I pulled the mono rope out of my belt. I set it to apply an ultraadhesive gel every two feet, so you could stick the rope anywhere. It would hold as well as a piton.

I had only practiced with it once, during the basic training.

Now with some hindsight, the two-week basic training had been completely ridiculous. During that time, we were allowed to hold all the equipment in our hands. But mainly we were brainwashed: from now on we were true heroes and had to sacrifice our lives for others. They showed us the great weapons and let us walk around in a robot combat suit. But every evening there was a grandiose dinner. Such events were held every week to cover the supply of new ReS members, as I now knew. It had felt good then, the strong instructors we had and the false security that all the weapons we were allowed to hold radiated. Now I knew it was different.

Anyway, in any case, I was now acting a little stupid, but comfortingly, Gabin and Emily seemed to be out of practice as well. I knew Tartelette was sitting downstairs shaking her head, planning an extra dose of climbing practice for the next few days.

The climbing went well, as there were countless ledges sticking out of the roof for us to pull ourselves up and tie the rope to.

For the last few feet before my stance, I slackened enough rope so that I could swing along the roof if necessary. I was a little proud of this good idea.

But it was not

"Look out, it's coming!" shouted Gabin.

As a white body rose from the alcove, three arrows shot from our Harzapp flew through the air.

In the next moment the seagull, pierced with two arrows, slapped me on the helmet. In shock, I let go and sailed headlong downward. After four meters, the rope tightened at the first attachment point. From the impact my freshly repaired collarbone hurt. Too bad we didn't yet have the new combat suits Tartelette had ordered. They would have much more active cushioning.

The repo gull had recovered and was banging madly against my visor.

I pulled my dive knife from my arm. Finally, I caught the gull's head and severed it with a jerk. Down below, I heard Tartelette laughing in amusement, "Bravo, well done."